The First Week Home

August 22, 2014

Well, this wraps up my first week at home. Technically, a full week would be Sunday, but I wanted to get a quick update out before the weekend. The adjustment back into “regular” non-hospital life has gone pretty well. I’m getting around the house without a problem. I have left the house once to go with Mary Ann to Med Mart for some supplies and that went well.

I have enjoyed doing regular stuff like making breakfast for Sarah and me, which was something I did before all this started, and making my own lunch without needing to pick it a day in advance from the hospital menu. I got out the coffee press and a bag of fresh Starbucks Sumatra coffee. There’s nothing like a press for fresh coffee. I didn’t even try the hospital coffee. Just the thought of it frightened me.

Tonight, Mary Ann has her annual welcoming night at the preschool, commonly know as Popsicle Night. Sarah and I ordered dinner from LaRosa’s and are enjoying a father-daughter “party.” Which, as of now, consists of Sarah listening to music on her iPad and me typing a blog post. Though she insists that she wants to watch a movie later. We’ll see.

The home health care folks came out this week and I will be starting in-home physical therapy next week. While I have been waiting for that to get started, I keep walking and doing the exercises I was doing in the hospital. My stamina is improving and I walked about 500 feet today with a walker.

We are looking forward to this weekend. We will get to see some friends and family that I haven’t seen for awhile. I will also be back to church this Sunday. I can’t tell you how much I have missed those folks. It is nice that we post our worship services online so I have kept up with the sermons. But, there’s nothing like being there in person.

Finally, as I expected, one of our friends here in Madeira, had not one, but two, walkers in her garage. One is a standard wheeled walker and the other is a rolling walker with a seat built in that will be great when I start walking outside. Sarah and I always enjoyed walking the the half-mile circle that our street makes and I am looking forward to doing that again soon. We picked up the third walker on sale at Med Mart on sale, so I now have one on each level and don’t need to carry one up or down steps. That keeps me and the therapists happy.

Next week is going to be busy. I start back to work part-time (that is an advantage of working from home) and I start therapy three times a week. A group of people from church are coming over to help us move furniture on Wednesday night and we will need to have stuff packed and ready to go before they get here. It is a huge project and, when it is done, we can start getting stuff back in order again.

For prayer requests for the week, please pray for increased strength in my legs and for continued recovery and the ability to walk. I’m beginning to sound like a broken record. (Remember records? For my younger readers, a broken record skipped and would play the same thing over and over again. So, when you repeat yourself, you sound like a broken record. OK, enough history.) As we get into the long-haul recovery period, it is easy to forget that prayer is as important now as it was when I couldn’t walk at all. Also, please continue to pray for my health. Whatever virus or infection I had that started this, I don’t want to get it again.

I appreciate all of you who are reading the blog and sending me notes of encouragement. It has been great to see this blog grow from a way to share information with other tech-heads into a place where I can share what’s on my mind and heart and people are being encouraged by what they read. Please let me know when I strike a chord with you and when you have questions or comments. Finally, this prayer thing works both ways. Please let me know how I can be praying for you.

I have now filled the better part of an hour and Sarah still isn’t ready to watch a movie. This is what I longed for the most when I was in the hospital; a nice quiet evening at home. I hope that you all have a great weekend and I hope to see some of you at church on Sunday.